The Criminology of Carlo Morselli - Part II

The second of two volumes, this book about the criminology of Carlo Morselli includes a diversity of contributions that study the social inter-dependence of criminal phenomena. It presents various studies on the importance and impact of social ties on offenders, victims and the social response to crime.

The idea that social relationships are central to the understanding of human phenomena draws its roots from Jacob Moreno’s work in 1934, whose contribution – among others made at about the same time – paved the way for social network analysis (SNA), a set of methods and approaches that study dyadic relationships and their connections to other dyads in the same network. Surprisingly, SNA was not widely adopted in criminology until the end of the 20th century. It took researchers like Carlo Morselli to apply the principles of SNA and graph theory to criminological objects. As a researcher, Morselli embodied SNA; he was a so-called ‘broker’ in his network of social scientists, linking dozens of excellent researchers that he collaborated with, directly or not. Granovetter showed that ‘weak ties’ – or acquaintances – were important in the diffusion of new ideas, and Morselli put that insight to practice in criminology. While it is impossible to summarise Carlo Morselli’s work in a single paper or book, the breadth of his contributions to criminology are highlighted in the six chapters of this volume, which all draw from a specific area of interest of Carlo Morselli.

The Criminology of Carlo Morselli – Part II will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Sociology, Social Sciences. The chapters included in this book were originally published as a special issue of Global Crime.

Author Biography

David Décary-Hétu is Associate Professor at the School of Criminology of the Université de Montréal, Canada. Through his innovative approach, Prof. Décary-Hétu studies how offenders adopt and use technologies, and how that shapes the regulation of offenses, as well as how researchers can study offenders and offenses.

Rémi Boivin is Associate Professor at the School of Criminology of the Université de Montréal, Canada. Prof. Boivin’ focus on crime analysis led him to the study of co-offending and mobility, for which he used social network perspectives and techniques. His doctoral dissertation was co-supervised by Prof. Carlo Morselli.